Charter says most of its upstate expansion was legitimate

State Public Service Commission has contested company's filings

Updated 4:57 pm, Thursday, May 17, 2018

Photo: Jeff Roberson

Image 1of/1

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 1

FILE - This April 1, 2015, file photo, shows a Charter Communications van in St. Louis. New York state has reached a potential settlement with Charter Communications for not building out its Spectrum cable network quickly enough in the state. The deal could total $13 million. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File) less

FILE - This April 1, 2015, file photo, shows a Charter Communications van in St. Louis. New York state has reached a potential settlement with Charter Communications for not building out its Spectrum cable ... more

Photo: Jeff Roberson

Charter says most of its upstate expansion was legitimate

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

Albany

Charter Communications says its Spectrum network expansions in upstate New York are almost all legitimate, and efforts by the state Public Service Commission to penalize the company for allegedly submitting bogus information is unwarranted.

The PSC announced in March it intended to fine Charter $1 million because the company had not met the network expansion goals required as part of its 2016 acquisition of Time Warner Cable. Under the deal, Charter has to bring its Spectrum network to 145,000 new customers who previously did not have access to high-speed internet, including more than 36,000 customers by a December deadline.

Although Charter originally announced that it had met the December deadline and even surpassed its required build-out goal for the period, PSC Chair John Rhodes announced on March 19 that Charter had fallen short by 14,522 addresses by either double-counting in places like New York City where high-speed internet is already prevalent or bringing cable to places in upstate New York that already had existing connections.

"It is critically important that regulated companies strictly adhere to the state's rules and regulations," Rhodes said in a statement. "If a regulated entity like Charter's cable business decides to violate or ignore the rules, we will take swift action and hold them accountable to the full extent of the law."

In filings with the PSC responding to the charges, Charter disputed the commission's conclusions in most cases.

"The proposition that every location in New York City is necessarily already serviceable with a high-speed connection ... is demonstrably false," Charter's lawyers wrote in a May 9 filing with the PSC.

As for its upstate New York expansion projects, Charter said that the PSC lacks an understanding of what needs to be done to connect new customers.

"Charter has investigated each project and is providing details of the work performed," Charter wrote in the same filing. "The department appears to have indiscriminately challenged construction projects whenever there were already Charter network facilities in the vicinity of the address to which Charter extended service. This approach neglects the wide range of construction activity other than running horizontal aerial cable to reach new geographic areas that is sometimes necessary to extend service to additional locations."

Charter did exclude some addresses that it found to have been submitted to the PSC in error, but it said the majority were needed in upstate, especially for new apartment construction in Albany and Saratoga Springs.